This is hands down one of the best statements on media attitudes towards Twilight. It’s written by a PhD and a Harvard college administrator. Here’s one of the best parts:
The negative reactions fall in two camps: The dismissive camp simply mocks Twilight’s incorporation of silly, “moony” elements like undying love and the surprisingly authentic portrayal of wedding ritual, honeymoon jitters and the shock of unintended pregnancy; the topics are apparently too boring and unrelatable for most reviewers. The deluded camp, conversely, takes Twilight far too seriously, faulting it for leading young girls to mistake fantasy for reality in dangerous, disempowering ways.
It makes you wonder if some people missed the memo that hundreds of millions of females, like their male counterparts, enjoy their fantasy life straight-up weird, sexy, and implausible.Why is it that female fantasies are such a source of derision and fear? The male species is allowed all manner of violent, creepy, ludicrous and degrading movie tropes, and while we may not embrace them as high art, no one questions them seriously as entertainment, even when sometimes we probably should. (Violent imagery is, after all, associated with violent behavior.) You want to saw someone in half or put their head in a vice? Showcase naked strippers as a fake plot device? Pair a beautiful and successful career woman with a slovenly, unemployed man? Pretend you are Wolverine? Go right ahead. We know you can’t really be serious. But watch a tender wedding night between a virginal, undead superhero and his teenage, human bride, and the scolds come out in force. Are parents worried that their teenage daughter actually wants to be impregnated by a 100-year-old vampire who can crush a headboard with his hands (and perform an emergency C-section with his teeth)?
If you read nothing else today, read the entire thing on Time
So why in our opinion don’t more speak out? A lot of us are so used to the “But Twilight Will Turn You Into a Mindless and Submissive Drone” speech that we are immune to it. We hold successful jobs and furthermore hold our own w/our male counterparts. The proof of it not indoctrinating us is in our daily lives and we laugh at those trying so very hard to save us from ourselves. There’s something pretty hilarious about people so hell bent on trying to save us from the delusion of our thinking on escapist fantasy. We’ve got enough real-life issues to worry about rather than argue with those that just don’t get it. We’ve spoken with our book and box office dollars. We’ve heard the critics, we’ve comprehended their points, we just don’t agree…and THAT my friends drives them nuts. In short this adage sums it up, “Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.”
TY to multiple people who alerted us to this article via email and Twitter!
“Beatlemania is the comparison that everybody makes, but Twilight is more like the Beatles in reverse. Beatlemania was a reaction to the buttoned-down, sexually repressed pop culture of the 1950s. Twilight is a reaction to the reaction — it’s a retreat from the hedonistic hookup culture that the sexual revolution begot. Nobody hooks up in Twilight. Meyer put sex back underground, transmuted it back into yearning, where it became, paradoxically, exponentially more powerful. “For me, the appeal of the vampire is safe sexuality,” says Melissa Rosenberg, who has written the screenplays for all the Twilight movies. “It’s the ultimate romantic ideal. You have the allure of the danger. And yet there’s only so far you can go.”
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